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  NEVER FEAR

  RELIVING THE LIFE OF

  SIR FRANCIS CHICHESTER

  IAN STRATHCARRON

  Dedicated to Evie and Arlo, and Little and Patch

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FOREWORD

  1 ARISE, SIR FRANCIS

  2 FRYING PANS AND FIRES

  3 MAKING HAY

  4 GIPSY MOTH

  5 SPOT ON!

  6 SHEILA AND THE WAR

  7 GIPSY MOTH II

  8 GIPSY MOTH III

  9 GIPSY MOTH IV

  10 GIPSY MOTH V

  INDEX

  COPYRIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to all who helped make the book come true:

  Adrian Clark for help with Gipsy Moth V

  Alexander and Lucy Rhind from the Old Rectory, Shirwell

  Andrew Simpson at the RAF Museum in Hendon.

  Anne, Lady Chichester for her memories of Sheila and Sir John

  Barry Pickthall at PPL for help with images

  Belinda, Lady Montagu for the ‘60s memories

  Bob Gibson for Gipsy Moth flying instruction.

  Chris Chapman in Wellington, New Zealand

  David Gibbons of the National Trust at Arlington Court

  David Martin for his family memories

  Edward, Lord Montagu for family help

  Ewen Southby-Tailyour for his briefing on Blondie Hasler

  Giles Chichester for his connections

  Gordon Wilson in Peacehaven, New Zealand

  Gregor Halsey of the London Model Yacht Club

  Ian Hutton and Jessy Lawrence at the Lord Howe Island Museum

  Jamie Chichester, Sir, for his family explanations

  Janelle Blucher and Gaye Evans at the Norfolk Island Museum

  Janet Grosvenor of the Royal Ocean Racing Club

  Jeremy Goodwin in Auckland, New Zealand

  John Delaney at the Imperial War Museum Duxford

  John Roome of the Royal Ocean Racing Yacht Club

  Ken Robinson for his Beaulieu recollections

  Lance Chapple of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron

  Lyndsay Tooley from Norfolk Island

  Manu and Snah Patel from Devon

  Marty Montagu-Scott for help with Buckler’s Hard research

  Neil Waterson in Upper Hutt, New Zealand

  Neville Cullingford, Squadron Administrator at RAF Hullavington

  Nick Blake, Squadron Adjutant Flight Lieutenant at RAF Hullavington

  Peter Bradford of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron

  Peter Bruce for his insights

  Peter Bugge of the Guild of Air Pilots and Navigators

  Philip Clifford of the Brooklands Museum

  Piers and Silvie Le Marchant with Gipsy Moth III in Corfu

  Ralph Goodwin in Peacehaven, New Zealand

  Ralph, Lord Montagu for help with Beaulieu research

  Richard Baggett of the UK Sailing Academy

  Rob Thompson and Eileen Skinner of Gipsy Moth Trust

  Roy Palmer for the use of his Gipsy Moth

  Rt Revd Alan Winstanley at St Peters, Shirwell

  Sarah Hustler at the Poole History Society

  Sebastian Cox, Head of Air Historical Branch at RAF Northolt

  FOREWORD

  I am delighted to be writing the foreword to this book as in many ways Francis’s life was like the foreword to my own.

  Unlike him I took to the water early in life, already a seaman when joining the Merchant Navy at seventeen. Francis was in his mid-fifties when he first raced a yacht, and that was as crew. Yet, as Ian points out in this excellent account of his triumphs and tribulations, twelve years later he was one of the most famous men on the planet and certainly by far the most famous yachtsman.

  In fact it was at his moment of greatest celebration that the first seeds of long distance record breaking stirred in my soul. I was sailing my boat Suhaili back from India when I first heard of Francis’s circumnavigation and thought at the time that it left just one record left unclaimed. Francis had circumnavigated solo, albeit with a one month pit stop in Sydney. Surely the next challenge, the last unadventured adventure, was to circumnavigate solo without a pit stop at all?

  Fascinating to me, reading Ian’s Never Fear, is how much long distance sailing has changed in the years between Francis’s and my circumnavigations to those who would attempt to circumnavigate today. The hard skills remain: seamanship of course, plus dealing with fear and loneliness. It is the soft skills that have made racing easier yet more demanding; likewise, safer yet riskier. Whereas we now know to within a few metres where we are all the time, in those days we had to wait for a sun sight, often for several days. Yet this knowing of position itself demands greater performance to reach the next position. And so with safety: satellite technology has made being rescued far more likely than before – it was more or less unthought of in our day – so the sailor’s danger signals that were red are now merely yellow. The higher the bar, the higher the jump. Likewise with the weather: now we can see live on screen what is going to happen where and when; in the 1960s we had a barometer and a weather eye on the clouds and wind direction to judge the portents for what might be approaching.

  It follows that Francis’s greatest skill, that of a master navigator, is a redundant skill in today’s world. Like Ian piloting the tanker up the Mississippi, an iPhone with the right app is all you really need if close to land – and offshore, satellites take over where mobile signals fade.

  But what are not redundant are his qualities as a man. I recall two Francises. Francis I was the record breaker: a monomaniac on a mission, totally determined, focused to the point of what seemed rudeness, fearless, fatalistic, the mountain mover. Francis II was the Francis ashore: charming, patient, civilised, generous and cultured, the family man, easy with friends and courteous to strangers. What Francis I and Francis II shared was a man happy in his skin, whichever skin was on him at the time.

  Francis could only ever have been an Englishman, in fact he was the caricature of a foreigner’s view of the ideal Englishman: understated yet heroic when needed, calm but not to be bossed around, disliking of anything to do with a ‘fuss’, especially a media fuss, even more a medical fuss, amusing in conversation, self-depreciating, loyal to friends, without obvious foes, magnanimous, wry, easily humoured and easily humorous.

  Francis was the example I followed, in fact we joked about me finding out what record he would attempt next so that I could prepare to break it later. And he did; and I did. I am so pleased his memory will live on through this excellent biography and I am sure the reader will enjoy reading it as much as the author clearly enjoyed writing it.

  ROBIN KNOX-JOHNSTON

  It’s extraordinary how you feel the world should be run after being alone for so long.

  CHAPTER 1

  Arise, Sir Francis

  IT WAS, EVERYONE AGREED, a wonderful occasion: mid-morning summer sunny, with Union flags, royal standards and naval ensigns ruffling in a lazy westerly breeze, Old Father Thames resting at high tide, banks brimming with crowds, all anticipation and excitement, waiting for their Queen, surrounded by her pageantry, to knight their hero.

  Ashore lay Wren and Vanbrugh’s seventeenth-century baroque masterpiece, Greenwich’s Royal Naval College, emblem of empire, its twin-domed wings haughty over their matching Solomonesque palaces reaching down to the river around the Grand Quadrangle. On the square’s lawn naval cadets sat cross-legged on the grass, behind them junior ratings and officers, a set of blue and white on green, and behind them the Chichester family and friends in suits and tweeds, pearls and summer hats, smiles and laughter.

  On the ground floor
of King Charles II’s original Greenwich Palace, in the Wren Room overlooking the river, Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, attended by their host, Admiral President Vice-Admiral Sir Horace Lyddon and their aide-de-camp, Captain Hedley Kett, were briefed on the morning’s schedule by the Queen’s long-serving Private Secretary, Sir Michael Adeane. It was 9.45 am. As usual the Royal Household’s organisation was impeccable. Gipsy Moth IV would berth in precisely thirty minutes and cast off precisely sixty minutes after that. In the meantime there was a public ceremony to perform and a tour to be made, all finely timed and executed.

  In the adjoining Hawksmoor Room Lord Plunket, Equerry to the Queen and godson of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Buckingham Palace Press Officer Sir Richard Colville unsheathed the ceremonial sword and knelt on the ceremonial stool, double-double-checking the tools of the ceremony. The knighting sword was the very one with which, in 1581, an earlier Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth I, had knighted an earlier Sir Francis, Sir Francis Drake, for an earlier circumnavigation on board Golden Hind a few cables upstream at Deptford.1 On that occasion, as Sir Horace scarcely needed reminding, the bridge connecting the ship to the shore collapsed ‘and upwards of One Hundred Persons did fall into the River’. On this occasion, Lord Plunket scarcely needed reminding, the ceremony would be held in public, a worldwide televised public too, in a late change from the planned private knighting. About the gold-painted and crimson-cushioned knighting stool Colville could be more relaxed: it had no provenance and, as yet, no mishaps to its name.

  At 10 am the Queen’s close friend, letter-writer and lady-in-waiting, the Hon. Mrs Mary Morrison, entered the Wren Room for the Queen’s and Prince Philip’s final look in the full-length mirror that the Royal Household ensures precedes them on all occasions. The Queen was forty-one years old, five feet six inches tall in her raised John Lobb cream shoes. Entitled to wear the full naval uniform of her rank, Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy, she chose to let the celebration outrank her and wore a Norman Hartnell off-white two-piece suit with royal blue cuffs and collar and matching hat. She looked admirably nautical, just right for the day. Prince Philip, five years older and six inches taller in his Church derby shoes, forswore his rank’s uniform too, that of Admiral of the Fleet, and wore a dark grey double-breasted suit from Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row. At 10.10 am Colville and Plunket re-joined them in the Wren Room. With five minutes to go the royal party was complete and chit-chatting in practiced serenity.

  Serenity was in short supply aboard Gipsy Moth IV. The whole voyage from Plymouth to London, which should have been the triumphant homecoming climax to Francis’s circumnavigation, had been bedevilled from its inception; and now yesterday a new spanner had been chucked into the works, a royal spanner that could hardly be gainsaid.

  Francis had first heard of his knighting on his last night in Sydney, five months ago, when he and his wife, Sheila, had been awoken in the early hours by an excited Commissioner, Sir Charles Johnson, with the hot news from the Palace. The next morning, as he was casting off to finish his voyage around the rest of the world, the Governor-General, Lord Casey, handed him a confirming telegram from the Queen. From then onwards the Royal Household and Sheila had been watching his progress home and keeping a number of days from mid-June to mid-July free for the formal knighting ceremony. By the time he was in the Bay of Biscay, firm dates from the Queen’s diary were being floated to Sheila and they settled on 13 June for a private knighting in Greenwich, home of the longitude meridian with which he had reckoned a thousand fixes and symbol of Britannia’s seaborne empire, followed by a public reception and lunch given by the Lord Mayor at Mansion House for a homecoming Londoner.

  Working backwards from Greenwich on 13 June, Sheila and the Palace agreed on a week for Francis, their son Giles and her crew to sail Gipsy Moth IV from Plymouth to London, so leaving Drake’s old Devon port no later than 6 June. At that stage Francis was estimated to arrive in Plymouth around 1 June, so leaving the best part of a week for celebrations and recovery there – more than enough time, it would seem. Sheila had no option but to assume that all would be well, which she knew really meant Francis’s frail health would be well, but she must have known deep down what all sailors know from experience: sailing schedules and landlubber timetables seldom rub along too well together.

  Francis actually arrived back a few days earlier than anticipated, on 28 May, after a gloriously fast and calm passage up through the Western Approaches. Plymouth was there to greet him: half a million souls thronged the Hoe and shorelines to see him arrive in a beautiful sunset. The world’s media were there to greet him too: photographers and camera crew had hired more or less anything that would float to capture the moment. Francis was overwhelmed but grinned back through clenched teeth. He hated ‘a fuss’ at the best of times but after five months of living at peace with himself, this hysterical floating fandango crowding in on him and Gipsy Moth IV was the very opposite of the quiet reunion with Sheila and Giles for which he had hoped.

  On 30 May the Lord Mayor of Plymouth laid on a Thanksgiving Service followed by a fully functioned civic reception and dinner. Next day the Royal Western Yacht Club hosted him. Press conference followed press conference. Everyone wanted a piece of Francis and after five months of sharing himself only with himself, he now had to share himself with the world. Everyone now seemed to have known him for years, everyone was now his old friend from way back, everyone was a well-wisher who had always known he would do it, everyone wanted to slap his back. After a week the constant, unwanted, unnatural adulation was wearing him pale and gaunt. The sea of people and their agendas was proving harder to weather than the sea itself. Sheila urged him to cancel the last great occasion, another formal dinner, this time given in his honour by the naval Commander-in-Chief of Plymouth. She and Giles were ready to sail for Greenwich the next morning. Francis said he couldn’t cancel; during dinner he collapsed and was admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital. They diagnosed a burst duodenal ulcer and exhaustion, nervous and physical. They confined him to his hospital bed so his body might recover.2

  Buckingham Palace then suggested a new date: 7 July. Sheila called on their old family – and Royal Family – friend, Commander Erroll Bruce, to be the Sailing Master for the voyage. Francis would have the three weeks’ rest that the hospital demanded and then a week as a passenger on Gipsy Moth IV for the journey to London.

  1967 was the summer of sun as well as the summer of love and the good weather shone for their cruise along the south coast. They stopped just once, at Newhaven, and were promptly mobbed by more jubilant well-wishers, who nearly capsized the pontoons. As they passed Dover the Warden of the Cinque Ports greeted them and another flotilla of press launches – or as Francis called them, ‘press hooligans’ – descended on them; aboard Gipsy Moth IV they smiled and waved like royalty and sailed on. Erroll Bruce reported that while Francis was happy to smile and wave, the effort tired him; he was clearly still unwell. On 5 July they found a lovely, peaceful anchorage, as used by the old clipper ships, at the mouth of the Thames under North Foreland and enjoyed their last peaceful evening aboard together; they knew that for the next forty-eight hours they would be swept along by a Force 8 gale of public expectations.

  On 6 July the celebrations along the Thames began with gun blasts at Southend and continued with vast cheering crowds lining the narrowing river. From every creek and inlet local boats came out to wave or join the flotilla. While waiting for the tide to change off Gravesend they were entertained to lunch on board the training ship HMS Worcester. Towards the end of lunch they saw an official launch speeding towards them. On board was the same royal press officer, Sir Richard Colville, who was now waiting to greet them ashore.

  A Gipsy Moth biplane flies past Gipsy Moth IV en route from Plymouth to Greenwich

  On board the Worcester Colville now became the royal spanner in the works. The Queen had changed her mind. Instead of a private ceremony in the Hawksmoor Room at the Admiral Pr
esident’s Palace, there would now be a public ceremony in the Great Quadrangle. She had been told about the sword; she could sense the public joy; the weather was perfect; the world was watching; she last line, was the Queen; and the Queen had changed her mind.

  On board Gipsy Moth IV they protested as best they could: all their clothes for the ceremony had been sent ahead from Plymouth to Greenwich; in the lockers to hand they only had crew kit. Sheila’s least scruffy outfit was a bright red trouser suit; she had no shoes but only sandals; the boys just had reefer jackets. No problem, Sir Richard smoothed, giving Francis his own tie and rustling up some others from the Worcester’s mess room, it’s quite acceptable to step ashore in crew clothes, it adds to the atmosphere. ‘And Lady Chichester too, in crew clothes?’ asked the future Lady Chichester. Colville replied haughtily: ‘It is Her Majesty’s wish that Sir Francis should be honoured as he comes ashore, and what could be more suitable than for you all to be dressed for sailing as you come ashore?’

  Now Francis objected: he was not well, and how embarrassing it would be for the Queen if he wobbled or fainted in front of her. Colville replied: ‘Commander Bruce will give you a sip of brandy beforehand.’ Francis replied that he would not breathe brandy on his Queen. All protest seemed in vain. The nonchalant Colville shrugged and left. The crew braced themselves for this new and very public development.

  And thus they awoke on board Gipsy Moth IV at first light on 7 July. The setting didn’t help lift their nerves. A special mooring had been prepared for them at Woolwich just three miles, or half an hour, upstream from Greenwich. Situated where the Thames Flood Barrier now lies, the mooring was in a thoroughly industrial setting, just downwind of the droning Woolwich power station with its foul fumes and dust layer, in the days before London’s air and river had been cleaned up.